Hyperbolic Thought. Neurocognitive Perspectives on Deformation
Special Session
How do literary and visual representations based on caricatures, deformations and hyperboles challenge our mind and reshape our knowledge of the world?
250 words abstracts by 23 March 2017
Paolo Gervasi (p.gervasi@qmul.ac.uk)

CREATIME workshop at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, May 11-12, 2017

CALL FOR BLITZ PRESENTATIONS

The project CREATIME: Time in the Creative Mind organizes its first international workshop on May 11-12, at the University of Navarra, in Pamplona, Spain. The title of the workshop is Time concepts and their expression: creativity, cognition, communication.

For our blitz presentations session (10 minutes presentations + long discussion) we are calling for submissions from PhD and early-career researchers. We are interested in presentations from any disciplinary background, dealing with any aspect of time concepts and their expression that is relevant for the understanding of human creativity, cognition, or communication. Data can come from any modality or genre: speech, text, gesture, film, literature, comic, art, philosophy, science, or any other.

There is no fee. Meals will be offered. We are offering 5 grants covering all costs of accommodation in Pamplona for arrival on May 10 and departure on May 13.

Please email us (creatime.team@gmail.com) with subject “abstract” and, as a PDF attachment, a one-page abstract with no more than 10 bibliographical references (less are welcome) no later than February 28. We will get back to you during the first week of March. In the body of your email, please include your full professional details. Please also indicate whether you would like to apply for one of the grants covering accommodation expenses, explaining briefly why you have difficulties obtaining the funding from other sources. Funding considerations will not be taken into account when evaluating your abstract.

Notes to Artists
Artists of the world, Keep at your posts! Unite!
Peter London

Were you surprised at the outcome of the recent elections? I was.
Were you upset, saddened, disheartened? I was. Feel an unexpected
ominous change in the weather, climate ahead? Me too. Trustworthy
sources of what where how and whom no longer trust worthy? Yes, of
course.
As an artist; are you asking yourself what now? Where and how might I
engage my gifts to advantage? Me too.
Much is still to be determined as the next administration takes its
place and enacts its agenda, but the early signs are already in; what
the incoming President has promised during his campaign, he is
fulfilling in his appointments to high office and legislative
priorities and they are profoundly disconcerting. Family here from
somewhere else? and whose isn’t? A shade darker than white: and who
isn’t? Your beliefs different than your neighbors? Truth and accuracy
given you the slip? Freedom of the press, the fate of the EPA,
International allies and foes now all topsy turvy ?
Indeed, how might we as artists engage our individual and collective
skills, knowledge and powers to preserve our values and freedoms, our
own sense of worth and dignities, as well as do like wise for others?
What role now for the arts, for artists, art teachers, literary and
performance artists and the institutions that present and encourage
our work?
Sure, let’s join marches, write letters to the editor, call our
Congressman, boycott things that repel us, sign petitions, give even
more money and time to good causes. Resist, promote, and never give
up. Never, ever give up.
But, at the same time, let us not put aside our particular gifts as
artists. For the arts, all the arts, as practiced and witnessed, stand
in the way of the closing door. Our art provides a piercing light that
oppressors are at pains to extinguish, for every art form shamelessly
blurts out the truth that there is always something more and better.
Always. The arts proclaim by their very presence our endless
capacities to imagine, care, and to create alternative visions of what
is good and what is just. And, who and what gets invited.
We know, as demagogues surely understand, that the arts serve deepest
and best both its creators and enveloping civilization, when the
artist, with the fullness of their mind, their body and their spirit
pour all their efforts into creating work that reveals the
exhilarating view that everything, everything, and everyone is
different than and more than and better than anyone ever supposed. And
will ever suppose or know. The astonishing forever new face that the
arts presents proclaims the inconvenient truth that everyone and
everything is merely one iteration of an endless succession of
possibilities. Demagogues hate this.
Yet, that is what you and every artist have always been about. That is
the quality of art, and artists that drives potentates left and right
into a frenzy. That’s why we are so dangerous to those who only like
their own stuff and want their stuff to become everybody’s stuff, or
no ones at all. By lifting the veil- every veil- artists call into
question every second-hand account, every complete account, every
final solution.
So, what is an artist to do in these times? What we do now. What we
always do; make art. Make our art in the teeth of everyone telling us
not to, telling us to step back in line, to watch out step. Watch our
mouth.
Artists of the world, Keep at your posts! Unite!
Keep practicing your art with the same- perhaps enhanced- fullness and
exactitude our gifts provide. Make it more, make it better.
Daunted, correctly fear full, be daunted, be fear full. No matter,
stay at your post. Hold closer to your core beliefs. Don’t compromise
an iota. This drives potentates crazy. Keep at it. Hold your place for
as long as you can until the next artist can take your place. Hone
your craft, make it more piercing, more and better than you have
called your Self to do. This too drives them crazy. This will be hard.
So what.
So what? Hard is nothing, merely hard. Endure, persist, this is our
work. This determination to practice our craft keeps the door ajar for
the next to arrive. And they will, at some point in time, arrive.
The impending administration hand picked by this dangerously flawed
fellow to carry out his nefarious agenda, is not the first of such.
Nor are these the darkest of times. Nor have the arts contended with
such for the first time. The struggle for more light has been a
constant struggle for all time and for all people and most members of
most civilizations at some time or another. This is now our time.
___________________________________________________
Something else. Yes, art serves the world as the magnificent foot in
the closing of the door, in the unabashed affirmation of the right to
choose to be and to become. To say, out loud, what one has come to
hold dear and to hope for. That is why we are in the streets with our
art. Thus we serve others.
But art also vitalizes something else; art feeds our soul. I don’t
mean this metaphysically or poetically, just here, I mean actually. If
you are an artist, you already know this; we eat art. We go into our
work places hungry for something. And we leave pooped, bruised, from
time to time delighted, but always fed. What gets fed is our soul. The
objects and sounds and gestures and words which we combine just so,
nourishes us like no other “cooking.” Those who dine on our efforts,
our readers, audiences, they too are nourished, if perhaps in another
form of satisfaction. What does the soul want? It wants to knock you
out so you can see the stars, make you slap happy so you are in a
state of wonder. The soul invites this to be intimate with that, to
set aside your finite and local attachments and to lift your gaze.
Lift your Self. To join a larger family, one that includes everyone
and everything. To observe that everyone and everything is dancing,
wants you to dance too. Strange as this may sound to those who do not
practice the arts, this is not strange to us. It is not strange as
long as we practice our art.
These impending times may be scorching, there will be hunger, many
forms of hunger in the land. Learn to feed your Self. Feed your Soul,
making art feeds your Soul. Witnessing art feeds everyone’s Soul. Stay
at your post. Feed your Soul. Make your art

____________________________________

Finally this; in these disorienting and dispiriting times, when
everything seems unraveling, loose, disempowering, the creation of art
contends. By initiating any art enterprise, we hurl a desire into the
already made world and we insert a new vision and so, not
imperceptibly, we enlarge the scope of our collective possibilities,
and we increase and strengthen our own.
When so much seems and is awash, and boundaries failing, each stroke
we artists make to hone the form of our desires, just and so, we
delineate our boundaries, set a task and see it through. We set the
agenda, We establish the criteria. We say good. We get to say.
_______________________________________
Having both thrived and endured many such assaults to the common good
as our own and every civilization lurches through the many stages of
their rise and fall, rise and fall, (and rise?) this, our period,
Artists know how to thrive and endure as well as helping the next guy,
the next generation to do likewise. Little comfort to be sure in
this, but our predecessors can provide us with perspectives and
strategies – in the arts own vernacular forms- to contest the dimming
of light while encouraging the inalienable right to choose and choose
again. To imagine. To say.
As such, may I recommend a visit to the collection of my professional
papers now archived in the Special Collections division of Southern
Illinois University, and are available on-line
<> then to Peter London. Everything I have
written, taught and created these last fifty years has been opposed to
the values, administrative style, and rhetoric of the incoming
President and his minions and offers alternatives there to. The issues
in the collection of articles, books, lectures, courses and
correspondence address many of the major social issues of the last
half century in which the arts and education are significant
contributors: the Civil Rights movement, the war in Viet Nam, nuclear
disarmament, the Free Speech movement, as well as the arts and their
social responsibilities, the Arts as spiritual enrichment, Art speak
as empowered speech, Art and ecology, and more generally, the arts as
bastions and founts of broadening and deepening the endless
experiments of becoming humane.
In solidarity,
Peter London
December 2016

What would a narratology of science look like? A narratology of science-in-literature?
How might principles of cognition bring narrative and science together?

Narrative is a fundamental, probably natural, mode of thought and meaning-making. Science is now a central, more culturally-organized mode of knowing the world, of imagining, exploring, modeling, and acting on it. Narrative and science are not self-evidently related—indeed they may seem opposed. Yet many connecting threads can be discovered.
Scientists are adept and versatile narrators, telling many kinds of stories in many different genres and media. They recount unfoldings of events, at sometimes uncanny scales—from a particle collision at near light-speed, to the evolution of life, to the history of the universe—in order to interpret them. They narrate as individuals or in teams of thousands. Their events may be natural or manufactured, observed or inferred, objective or subjective or both. Scientists also tell human stories of developing hypotheses, arguments, theories and experiments, and they speak to many publics. Scientific stories may operate at the most concrete or the most abstract levels imaginable. Even mathematical proofs and physics equations have narrative qualities, some suggest.
Narrativity appears at various stages of scientific processes: informal speculation, thought experiments, experimental design and execution, measurement, argumentation, writing and revision, theorizing, paradigm-shifting, popularizing, caricaturing (boosting and bashing), retrospective histories and philosophies of fields, and more.
Scientists may adapt elements of literary narration (intentionally or not); in grand narratives or close case studies, understandings of nature become emplotted, shaped.

Complementarily, non-scientists often tell stories of science. In proto-scientific eras, knowledge-formation is arguably allied with myth, religion and magic: physics is entangled with metaphysics, chemistry with alchemy. And myth persists in modern discourses of science: myths of selfless or self-serving geniuses, of the promises and perils of technology. Journalists report and (attempt to) interpret scientific findings. Politicians and legal professionals grapple with scientific advice to decide social policies. Teachers tell science’s stories to students—starting with simple versions, as ladders to be kicked away once the rung of the next-best version is grasped. Other versions circulate on social media (for better or worse), mutating as they move. Literary narrators draw ideas and forms from scientific writing, as topics, themes, images and structures. Narrative art reimagines physical forces, forms of causality and time, natural orders, whole cosmologies—inflecting partial scientific understanding with intuitions of pattern and meaning.
Much excellent scholarship analyzes exchanges between science and narrative. In addition, cognitive scientists have explored narrative’s centrality to mental processes and products, and literary scholars drawing on cognitive science have produced far-reaching reinterpretations of basic concepts of narrative. Yet there remains a need for deeper understanding of the processes by which science can move into narrative, and (especially) vice-versa—deeper in the sense of more detailed, more precise, more systematic, more extensively informed by theory and practice, both narrative and scientific. The “narrative turn” has transformed the human and social sciences, but we have yet to take the full measure of narrative in the context of the physical sciences. The “cognitive turn” suggests that cognition may be a key to the deeper understanding we seek.
In this light, we propose a dialogue involving a direct and close focus on the intersections of narrative, cognition and science. This focus defines a very wide field of exploration, given the complexities of these terms, and we hope to inspire a rich discussion of new dimensions of these intersections.

We encourage consideration of questions on a range of topics bridging our foci:

– How do scientific thought, practice and communication use narrative qualities?
How does narrative cognition enable and reflect scientific cognition?
How do scientists see their work as involving story?
What forms of cognition overlap but contrast with narrative forms, and how?
e.g. abstraction, ambiguity-reduction, visualization, mathematics, description, argument.

-What are the implications of the first questions for epistemology, ontology, communication?
Does anyone still think science is “just another narrative”? What alternatives to the relativist/absolutist polarity have developed in the wake of the “science wars”? What does the future hold?

I am overjoyed to inform you that I am coordinating a conference entitled
A body of Knowledge – Embodied Cognition and the Arts
hosted by the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UCI in December 2016.

The focus on the event is to bring contemporary cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind to bear on art practices, with the goal of deploying understandings from embodied, distributed, situated, extended and enactive cognition paradigms as ways of explicating arts practices. There are several aspects to this:
1. Discussion of new perspecitves arising from current (ie cognitive neuroscience) research
2. Discussion of paradigms and historical precedents (William James, Jakob von Uexküll, Phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau Pony, Gibsonian Ecological Psychology, Maturana and Varela’s Autopoietic Biology, etc)
3. Studies of Arts practices from these perspectives
4. Studies of tools and work environments – physical and digital- from these perspectives.
5. Multicultural perspectives on embodiment and embodied practices.
5. Demonstrations of embodied practices from a variety of contexts, from clinical diagnosis to laboratory research to artisanal practices to martial arts.
6. performances and exhibitions
7. etc

I want to invite you all to consider taking part in the event as panel chairs, presenters and performers. As you can see from this listing, the event will bring together practitioners from various disciplines under the umbrella of an emerging field of study. The call for proposals will be released this coming Fall 15. In the meantime, I invite you to mull this over, talk to me about it, make suggestions and forward to those who might be interested.

FACULTY OF ART, DESIGN, AND HUMANITIES
School of Humanities
Lecturer in English Language VC2020
Full time, Permanent
Grade F: £32,277 – £35,256 per annum
DMU is internationally renowned for creativity and innovation. Our life-changing research is central to our vision. We want outstanding candidates to fill a number of posts with a lecturing and research focus as part of our VC2020 Lectureship programme designed to build research capacity towards REF 2020.
Applications are invited for a VC2020 Lectureship in English Language, based within the School of Humanities. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to undergraduate teaching at all levels, play a major role in the development of the undergraduate programme in English Language and be able to make a significant contribution to the high quality research undertaken within the English subject area. An ability to teach Stylistics at undergraduate level is essential and all applicants should have a completed PhD and experience of university teaching.
Please quote
reference: 9105
Closing Date: 8 June 2015
Interview Date: 26 June 2015
Job Description
Lecturer in English language VC2020
Faculty: Art, Design and Humanities
Grade: F Role profile: TAR2
Full time, Permanent
Duties of the role
Overall purpose of the role
To provide excellent teaching and research contribution to the university in the relevant areas of expertise. The Vice-Chancellor’s lectureships aim to enable individuals to grow and develop in their area of expertise in a fully supported teaching and research environment, with access to funding and development to enable them to progress along a teaching and research trajectory.
The university has four academic faculties; Art, Design and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Life Sciences and Technology. The successful appointee to this post will work within the School of Humanities, which resides in the Faculty of Art, Design, and Humanities.
The post-holder will become a full member of staff in their host faculty, and have access to a range of training opportunities relevant to their on-going professional development, as afforded to established staff. They will be able to participate in a mentoring programme within their faculty, and undertake suitable career development activities.
Main duties and responsibilities
The appointee will be expected to:
Plan and execute a research programme of internationally-leading quality within a relevant field, or inter-disciplinary area;
Publish their work in high-quality journals or monographs, or produce equivalent outputs in practice-based areas;
Attract significant levels of external funding for research activities and/or knowledge exchange initiatives;
Act as a role model for other researchers (including Masters and Doctoral students) in their School or Department;
Engage in a wide range of scholarly activities, including public engagement activities designed to advance the academic reputation of their Faculty, School/Department and the wider University.
To undertake teaching and assessment in relevant areas. This would currently include teaching on Adventures in Language (first year), Stylistics (second year), and supervision of final year dissertations.
To lead and develop modules, ensuring they are fit for the purpose.
To contribute to the development of subject area and related programmes of study.
To develop and disseminate high quality teaching materials.
To supervise dissertations/project work across the range of provision.
Duties of the role
To undertake external networking, e.g. with local business community, schools, colleges, or professional bodies (national committees), or with academic community (e.g. external examinerships).
To undertake such other duties as may from time to time be specified by the Subject Group Leader.
To participate in cross university and promotional activities such as open days, clearing and school visits.
To carry out relevant administrative duties associated with the post, for example with matters related to student recruitment, enrolment, induction, teaching and assessment.
To participate fully in the University’s Quality Assurance process relating to the discipline.
This job description reflects the main duties and responsibilities of the post. However, the post holder may be required to fulfil other ad-hoc duties commensurate with the level of the post from time to time.
Key Contacts:
PVC/ Dean of Faculty: Barbara Matthews
Head of School: Dr Philip Cox
Subject Leader: Dr Keith Scott
Additional Information
1. Treat all DMU staff, students, contractors and visitors with dignity and respect. Provide a service that complies with the Equality Act 2010, eliminating unlawful discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations with particular attention to the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief (or none), sex and sexual orientation.
2. To implement and monitor Health & Safety protocols and practice as required by legislation and by the Faculty’s Statement of Safety Organisation.
Person Specification
Lecturer in English Language VC2020
Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities
Grade:F Role profile: TAR2
Full time, Permanent
Area of responsibility
Requirements
Essential or desirable
*Method of assessment
A
I
T
D
Qualifications & Training
A good relevant honours degree in English Language, Linguistics, or a related discipline.
Essential
X
D
A completed PHD or equivalent qualification relating to English Language and/or Linguistics.
Essential
X
X
Postdoctural research experience
Desirable
X
X
Previous Work Experience
Experience of lecturing/ researching in a HE environment
Essential
X
X
X
A track record of working independently and/or collaboratively.
Essential
X
X
X
A track record of attracting research funding, or strong evidence of the potential to do so.
Essential
X
X
X
Willingness to undertake formal training in teaching and learning
Desirable
X
X
X
Specific Knowledge/Skills/Abilities/ Motivation/ Attitude Required
An aptitude for and evidence of publishing high quality research papers, monographs or equivalent outputs.
Essential
X
X
Positive approach to team working including team teaching and collaborative project/ research work.
Essential
X
X
A demonstrable capability on research project management.
Essential
X
X
Excellent communication skills
Essential
X
X
Ability to work under pressure and to adhere to deadlines
Essential
X
X
Area of responsibility
Requirements
Essential or desirable
*Method of assessment
A
I
T
D
Must have evidence of;
• Teaching and assessment at undergraduate level, including the ability to teach Stylistics
• Designing and creating course materials
• Providing student support at HE level
Essential
X
X
Exceptional presentation and verbal communication skills
Essential
X
X
Evidence of scholarship in the subject area.
Essential
X
X
Positive attitude to own CPD.
Desirable
X
X
Additional Requirements
A willingness to undertake further training and professional development, as appropriate.
Essential
X
Commitment to observing the University’s equality and diversity policy.
Essential
X
Willingness to work away from the university or to work flexibly, depending upon the demands of the role.
Essential
X
Potential to add value to the department’s professional profile.
Desirable
X
Flexibility and willingness to adopt new approaches, work co-operatively, and teach outside one’s specialism(s)
Essential
X
X
Enthusiasm for involvement in course development and public engagement
Essential
X
X
*A = Application Form; I = Interview; T = Test; D = Documentary Evidence

Emotion Concepts in Use
An interdisciplinary workshop at Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf
(18-19 June 2015)

Call for Papers

This workshop aims at analyzing emotion concepts from an interdisciplinary perspective (linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience). On the one hand, the workshop is interested in the cognitive mechanisms underlying the experience of emotions and emotion concepts, and, on the other hand, it is interested in the (frame -theoretical) modeling and prediction of the ways in which emotion expressions are used.

A core feature of human mental is not only the experience of emotion but also the application of emotion concepts to the outer world. We do not only know what it is like to be surprised, but we also describe a situation or an event as surprising or even call something a surprise. On the contrary, we might consider a situation to be sad, but we would not label it by the word sadness (in English, at least).

Moreover, it is not only the case that we apply emotion concepts such as SAD and JOYFUL to inanimate subjects as music, art and literature (e.g., ‘this song is so sad’, ‘this melody is so joyful’, ‘this story has a happy ending’), but we also use emotion concepts to intensify our emotions when we speak, for example, about panic-stricken fear.

We invite abstracts of no more than 250 words to be submitted to smelkonian@phil.uni-duesseldorf.de for blind refereeing until April 30, dealing with the following (and related) topics: